V.-HESIOD-DIDACTIC AND GENEALOGICAL POEMS VI. LYRIC POETRY-ELEGIAC POETRY BOOK I THE EARLY PERIOD CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Importance of Greek literature-The Greek language-Divisions and periods-Character of the periods-The dialects-Preservation of works of literature-Sources of information-The earliest poetry—The Muses-Mythical poets: Orpheus, Linus, Musæus, Eumolpus, Pamphus, Olen-Helicon, Delos, Delphi. The importance of ture. ANCIENT Greek literature is one of the most precious parts of our inheritance from past time, and has had a most powerful influence upon modern literature, modern thought, and, in general, modern civ Greek litera- ilization. This is due not merely to the fact that Greek literature is the earliest well-developed literature we know, but still more to its inherent excellence and its beauty of form as well as of content, which have brought it about that for two thousand years literary expression has been cast in Greek moulds, even when the writers have been themselves unconscious of that fact. The history of this literature can therefore hardly fail to interest all who are interested in modern civilization, whether they are able to read the Greek language or not. The Greeks, or Hellenes, as they called themselves, spoke a language belonging to the great Aryan or Indo-European family to which all the Germanic languages, including English, also belong. English is therefore akin to Greek, The Greek language. but the kinship is not close, and though we can see that many English words are related to Greek words, still the differences between the two languages are on the whole more striking than the resemblances. For one thing, Greek is a highly inflected language, showing the relations between words by means of terminations and other changes of form, while English shows such relations for the most part by means of prepositions and other words invented for the purpose, and by a more or less fixed order of the words in the sentence. In addition to inflectional forms, the Greeks also employed prepositions and the like, and their language abounds with particles to express different varieties of emphasis and of relations between words and sentences. Greek is therefore an unusually flexible and expressive language, wonderfully well adapted for the development of logical thought, poetic imagery, and literary form. These characteristics existed in the language even before any real literature came into being, but grew stronger with the growth of literature. Divisions of ture. Greek literature has been continuous from very early times until the present, but as a matter of convenience it is divided into three chief divisions: 1. The Greek litera- ancient literature, from the beginning to 529 A. D., when the Emperor Justinian ordered the schools of heathen philosophy to be closed. 2. The middle or Byzantine literature, from 529 A. D. to 1453, when Constantinople was captured by the Turks. 3. The modern literature, from the capture of Constantinople in 1453 to the present time. These dates are given only for the sake of convenience, for some writers before 529 A. D. show the characteristics of the Byzantine period, and the beginnings of the modern literature are to be traced for nearly a century before 1453, and in like manner some writers of these periods exhibit the characteristics of the period before. But exact dates serve to fix in the mind the times when the character of the literature was changing |